“Visibility here is even worse than I thought...” I muttered as I walked through a dense forest with Recilia. I hadn’t planned on bringing her with me today, but as always she’d insisted on coming. Today’s task would have gone by much faster if I’d been able to handle it alone, especially since I would have left at dusk and returned before anyone woke up, but it wasn’t meant to be.
That being said... Now that I was here, I was glad for the company. This forest was too dreary to trudge through alone.
“Are you sure this is the right place, brother? I’m pretty sure the only thing farther ahead is a lake.”
I turned back to Recilia, who was giving me a dubious look. “That lake is in fact our destination.”
“Liru Lake? But there’s nothing there...”
“Look, you can see it now.”
The forest suddenly opened up and we squinted as the red light of the setting sun shone into our eyes.
“What on...” Recilia’s jaw dropped open. Her reaction was understandable, considering the view before us.
“Just as I thought; it’s already appeared.”
In the early stages of BB the game, Liru Lake was just a sightseeing spot. There was no treasure here, and you couldn’t even find any monsters. But as the game age progressed, the lake’s true nature was revealed to the player.
“What in the world is that? Why is there a castle in the lake?”
The castle Recilia was referring to was Andaril, the Sunken Fortress. It was another special dungeon. As the game’s age progressed the lake’s water level got lower and lower, allowing you to access more of the fortress. Right now, only the highest towers were poking out of the water, but the bit of it you could see just under the surface hinted at how massive the structure was.
“Don’t tell me this is the dungeon we’re exploring next?” Recilia exclaimed, turning back to me.
I shook my head to the contrary. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go through Andaril, but it would be more efficient to explore it when more of it was actually accessible.
“Nope, I just came here to make sure it was here today.”
It was a rather annoying trek to come all the way out here, but seeing how much of this dungeon was above the water was the best way to track the passage of ages in BB.
There’s no doubt about it, we’re in the second age now.
I had assumed as much the moment Rose’s event had started progressing, but seeing these underwater ruins really made it sink in.
“Things are about to get real interesting.”
There weren’t many important world events in age one. It was mostly an introductory period to let the player explore the world and meet the important NPCs that would play a large part in future story events. Furthermore, you could control how long it lasted by manipulating a few key flags. But as soon as you reached age two, things got a lot more hectic. Events became bigger and more important, and the more of them you cleared the faster the ages advanced. The fact that we were in age two now meant that I was out of prep time.
The clock’s finally started ticking, and the world’s begun its slow, inexorable march toward destruction. Fortunately, I managed to stop the resurrection of Demon Lord Rose, but...
Now that the age had advanced, a lot more actors than just Rose would have begun to make their move. The various Demon Lords would be getting a lot more active, and we’d have to deal with disaster after disaster.
I guess that guy’s attack is probably going to be first, huh? I need to craft as many useful items as I can, and probably discuss countermeasures with Veteram... Shit, this is going to suck.
Despite my vast amount of game knowledge, I was just a regular adventurer, not the protagonist, nor even a hero. The most I could manage was mitigating the damage the coming disasters would cause. In order to actually overcome the trials the world was about to face we needed a true hero, a true protagonist to show up.
“Just where the hell are you hiding, protagonist?” I muttered quietly into the dark of the night, knowing there would be no response.